IE losing share, Firefox gains a bit, Chrome used by 1 in 8

With IE9, Firefox 4, and Chrome 11 all out, the second browser war is only getting fiercer. Let's take a look at the market share numbers for last month.

Between April and May, Internet Explorer dropped 0.84 percentage points, just a tad more than the previous month. Firefox, meanwhile, gained 0.08 percentage points, less than what it lost last month. Chrome gained 0.58 percentage points, making it last month's biggest winner. Safari was up 0.13 percentage points. Opera lost 0.11 percentage points.

At 54.27 percent, Internet Explorer has once again hit a new low. IE9, the latest and greatest from Microsoft, last month captured 4.19 percent of the market (up by 1.78 percent percentage points). IE8 lost 1.78 percentage points, but it's still the world's most popular browser. IE7 fell 0.31 percentage points and IE6 fell 0.49 percentage points. We're hoping that IE6 will fall below the 10 percent mark next month.

At 21.71 percent, Firefox is still below the peak it reached last year (24.72 percent). It appears that Firefox 4 is still not helping Mozilla regain overall market share. This is despite the fact that Firefox 4 last month captured a whopping 10.08 percent of the market (up by 4.65 percentage points). Firefox 3.6 lost 4.88 percentage points and Firefox 3.5 lost 0.20 percentage points.

At 12.52 percent, Chrome has hit a new high and is now being used by 1 in 8 of all Internet citizens. The browser's built-in updating system is working wonders for Google. Chrome 11 managed to capture 9.73 percent (up by 9.23 percentage points). Chrome 10 meanwhile fell 8.71 percentage points and Chrome 9 fell 0.06 percentage points.

The data is courtesy of Net Applications, which looks at 160 million visitors per month. As you can see above, the situation at TechSpot is slightly different: Firefox is first, IE is second, Chrome is third, Safari is fourth, and Opera is fifth. The only browser to gain share at TechSpot between April and May was Chrome.